Mission: Impossible. Nicole, Part 1 - Jim's incredibly hot uniform.

Season 3, episode 22 of Mission: Impossible is Nicole, where something happens that rarely happens - an MI plot goes all wrong. It's an episode that feels like it goes on forever, not in a bad way, but just in that a lot is packed into 48 and a half minutes, and because it doesn't stick to the usual 'Mission' script you're not quite sure what's going to happen next. Jim is shot and captured and helped to escape by the beautiful Nicole (Joan Collins) with whom he has fallen in love, or lust, or something. Don't expect in depth analysis here. Expect pretty, besotted and hurty Jim.

Jim, you always have blue cars – and this one looks like a boat after watching the Corvette in Route 66 so much.

Also, Jim, you look sexy as you run up the stairs.

Jim knows that this one is serious because it involves a villain with his chin in a surgical support. Those types are always mad as a badger.

Now, here’s some interesting fashion choices. It’s not a briefing in Jim’s apartment, so they’re not wearing all black and grey. The guy in the middle (code named Sparrow) has a very red shirt. Rollin has a red tie. A hint of danger, perhaps. (Also I’m loving the camera panning down until it’s shooting up through the underside of a glass table. Funnily enough I just came out of a Peter Graves Route 66 episode where he was shot a couple of times through the underside of a glass table.)

Jim looks pretty through the table.

Rollin looks pretty and serious as he sets fire to Sparrow’s telephone number. You have to be serious when you’re burning things you’re holding in your fingers.

Rollin does an exemplary turn as the crabby old general, with Jim as his unwelcome nursemaid.

This guy (Logan Ramsey) always plays weird evil mad people. He did in Star Trek and he did in Route 66 too.

Jim has just caught sight of Nicole. Even when she turns round, the fact that she has the eyes of a hammerhead shark doesn’t bother him. (Sorry, Joan Collins. I don’t really mean that.)

Let’s just have a shot of his lovely eyes. He does look like he’s been up all night, though.

This is the local meeting place for Freaky Evil Guys Anonymous. The guy on the left (Jon Lormer) was in Star Trek too, but I can’t remember whether it was in Errand of Mercy or Mirror Mirror. (Actually I’ve just discovered that he was in Star Trek three times, none of them in the episodes I thought. He was Tamar in The Return of the Archons, an old man in For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky, and Dr Theodore Haskins in The Cage.) The guy at the back is an odd faced man, Dal Jenkins, who makes up for his rather effeminate face with a deceptively deep voice.

Lots of nice filming in this scene, shooting past odd looking statues, and then this view of creepy-guy in the mirror.

Lovely images here of Jim and Nicole circling the room as the crowd mill between them and they never quite get a full glimpse of each other. I could take a hundred screencaps (but won't).

Gazing...

Rollin, meanwhile, is playing the lecherous old general to perfection, talking about breastworks and such.

There is a lot of circling the room and eye-sex going on.

Rollin has two blondes in his harem…

While Jim is being told about how disgusting Rollin’s behaviour is by an old woman, he’s so busy ogling Nicole he doesn’t listen to what she’s saying.

Finally they meet, as Nicole rescues him from the old lady. Someone – cameraman, director of photography – had a field day with all these sparkling candlelight and chandelier shots. It gives their meeting a feeling of intimacy in the crowd.

Real, genuine Jim-smile. Aww.

Some Nicole for good measure – but we don’t want too much of that, do we?

Jim is essentially being reduced to a giggling schoolgirl, he’s so besotted. (I know he's not giggling here, but you know what I mean.) They’re even talking star signs. He’s Pisces. She’s a Gemini – unsurprisingly.

And she touches him. I think he swoons a little. She touches his fingers first and he looks like he wants to dive into bed with her.

I love Rollin’s drunk scene. Jim is trying to get him back to his room and he doesn't want to go. It’s all a ploy so he’s free to go and rob the safe.

I’m saying nothing.

Nothing at all…
They exchange fun banter about how much totty each of them racked up.

Smitten. Oh, Jim, this is unlike you.

Not so far gone he can’t keep track of the time, though. The watch is all important in Mission: Impossible. I'm surprised they didn't have some kind of watch sponsorship.

Masterful Jim is going to Rollin’s rescue after Rollin set off the alarm.

This is Jim’s ‘Oh f**k I’ve been shot’ moment. This is what happens when you get distracted by women. Oh, Jim...